Israeli expert to coach NSW start-ups

A global expert on social impact start-ups is visiting Sydney to provide advice to aspiring NSW entrepreneurs.

Israel’s Neta-Li Meiri will mentor start-ups during her trip to Sydney, as part of the NSW Government’s Visiting Entrepreneurs Program.

Meiri is Managing Director of 8200 Impact, a non-profit business accelerator program based in Tel Aviv in Israel that works to develop start-ups that have a focus on delivering benefits to society in education, health and gender equality.

She will host a workshop, ‘How Social-tech Can Change the World’, at the Sydney Startup Hub on Thursday, 23 May to share her knowledge with the NSW start-up community.

Minister for Jobs Stuart Ayres said NSW companies with a focus on social benefit would learn from one of the world’s top experts.

“The Sydney Startup Hub is already home to autism recruitment start-up Xceptional and Australia’s first disability-tech accelerator, Remarkable. This visiting entrepreneurs program will encourage more start-ups to grow and deliver social benefits and job creation,” Ayres said.

Meiri said 8200 Impact aims to use technology to drive positive change in society and that its start-ups have raised more than US$40 million in investment capital.

“Our society has some huge global problems that can’t be fixed with old ways of thinking. We need new ideas and new technologies to disrupt the status quo and create new socially beneficial business models,” Meiri said.

“For example, 8200 Impact start-up Voiceitt raised more than US$13 million to develop speech-recognition technology to allow people with severe speech impairments to communicate using their own voices in real time. This successful start-up has won international competitions and grants including from Microsoft’s venture fund, M12.”

Meiri said she was excited about the opportunity to visit the Sydney Startup Hub to mentor NSW start-ups, and offered a number of initial tips.

“Entrepreneurs should understand the market and develop their technology in parallel with their business plan. They need to be able to communicate their business simply, so it resonates with their users, investors, partners — everyone.”

For more information and to register to attend, visit https://bit.ly/2DTIV5O.

Image caption: Neta-Li Meiri.

Please follow us and share on Twitter and Facebook. You can also subscribe for FREE to our weekly newsletter and quarterly magazine.